Gary Wright - The Dreamweaver

Just about everyone's heard "Dream Weaver" - I suppose Wayne's World can take credit for that (although it is a different version, he did like to re-record this song). Still when I found this album I was pretty stoked as I happen to like that song, but I really liked "Love is Alive" and I'll be honest I'd forgotten about that one until I dropped the needle, then it was "Holy mackerel. I love this song."

While my dollar bin copy didn't have an insert, there were decent credits on the back cover, and it was cool to see names like David Foster, drummers Andy Newmark and Jim Keltner and even a guitar cameo by Ronnie Montrose on "Power of Love" - it's the only guitar on the album and it comes at the close of the first side. After setting the tone with the various keyboard and special effects on the first four songs I actually didn't even notice the guitar the first time through - dang, even on the second pass it was there but just part of what drove the song. I guess it served the song, but seems like a waste of a marquee name.

Gary makes a point of mentioning on the back cover that "this is an album of keyboard music. With the exception of drums and vocals all the music heard was produced by keyboard instruments. Which is pretty cool, and I'm glad that this was made in 1975 because a few years later no doubt he'd have used drum machines, and removed one of the elements that make this so enjoyable. The interplay and tension between organic and synthetic. It also doesn't hurt that Gary has a great voice.

The second side opens with "Dream Weaver" it's been a while since I've sat and listened to this. I'd actually kind of forgotten how cool this song is. I do like the moog bass especially when combined with the acoustic drums the rhythm section it underpins everything. It's not an understatement to say this reverberated through future popular music and even progressive rock. Heck SAGA would use moog bass, and still does. The spacey ending was no doubt heard by John Hall from Prism and no I suspect influenced "Spaceship Superstar." Makes me wonder if Chris de Burgh heard this before writing "A Spaceman Came Travelling" - considering both were from 1975 but his was later in the same year, it would make for an interesting coincidence, but is unikely.

"Much Higher" takes the delayed keyboard riff from "Love is Alive" slows it down and marries it to a mid temp rock groove. It's a decent call back to the opening track and fits the tone of the album and is enjoyable in the context of the record, but not something that perks my ears up. The album closes out with a pretty forgettable song "Feel for Me" that just sort of played in the background.

While this wasn't full of killer songs, two of the nine are so good they lift the entire album. The worst I can say is the other songs are decent but not memorable, and at least they didn't suck. That would have tanked the album for me - killer songs or not.

Billy Rankin - Growin' Up Too Fast

Growin' Up Too Fast was never widely released on CD (if at all), and was one of the albums I really wanted to get back after a basement flood wiped out my vinyl collection in the 90s (when no one really gave a shit about records, and my insurance gave me a couple hundred bucks for an appraised $10,000 collection). Way back in 1984 my (dearly departed, and greatly missed) buddy Dave let me borrow his cassette copy that had a bonus track of " Get It On (Bang A Gong)" that when I bought the album didn't know it was a bonus track, or even what a bonus track was. If that sentence was hard to read just go back and skim it, I'm sure you'll get the gist. I'd find out later Billy was an off and on again member of Nazareth and wrote some absolutely killer songs for them. However, at the time all I knew was this guy laid it out cold with the first cut "Baby Come Back" and proceeded to lay down one killer tune after another and closed out the album (sans any...

Styx - Paradise Theater

Styx was hands down one of my favourite bands as a kid. They were a strange band, even back then. They were a hard rock, almost progressive at times who had a penchant for sucky ballads. I know there's a tendency for people to zero in on "Babe" as the song that killed the band's credibility. The roots go way back to almost the beginning when Styx released "Lady" on their second album. It showed a side to the band that needed to be kept in check, and for the most part the band kept things on a pretty tight leash. The band had been setting a gruelling pace, releasing an album a year (two in 1972) and by the time they released Paradise Theater (if I end up writing theatre later it's because that's how we spell it here) in 1981 they'd dropped ten albums in less than a decade. I snapped this up as soon as I saw it, and it became a fixture on my turntable. Like the band had announced on "Borrowed Time" from 1979's Cornerstone , "Don...

Gary Numan - The Pleasure Principle

"Cars" was really the only song I knew by Gary Numan. I knew the name of the album the song came from. Over the years bits and pieces of trivia are accumulated, but in terms of his music it was still distilled down to one song ... It would be too easy to write Mr. Numan off as a one hit wonder, and I suppose in terms of actual chart hits this was his defining moment as a solo artist. Of course this really means nothing, as Gary Numan would drop an album a year pretty much through to the end of the '80s. He'd then slow down a little but continues to make music. While The Pleasure Principle was Gary Numan's debut solo release in '79, he actually cut his teeth on a couple of albums in a band called Tubeway Army, first with the band's self titled release in 1978, and then on Replicas that came out in April of '79. By the end of Tubeway Army's run most of the band would follow Gary into his solo career. Paul Gardiner who had been with Gary from the beg...

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